If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.
But we moderns are impatient and destructive.
Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.
Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.